This Is How We Survive ― Revolutionary Mothering, War, and Exile in the 21st Century

In this volume, Mai’a Williams shares her experiences working in conflict zones and with liberatory resistance communities as a journalist, human rights worker, and midwife, while mothering her young daughter Aza. She first went to Palestine in 2003 to support Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation. In 2006, she became pregnant in Bethlehem, West Bank. By the time her daughter was three years old, they had already celebrated with Zapatista women in southern Mexico and survived Israeli detention, and during the 2011 Arab Spring they were in the streets of Cairo protesting the Mubarak dictatorship. She watched the Egyptian revolution fall apart and escaped the violence by moving to Europe. But three years later, she and Aza were camping at Standing Rock in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. This is a story about Mai'a and other mothers who are doing the work of deep social transformation by creating the resilient networks of care that sustain movements and create revolutions.

Mai’a Williams is a writer, visual artist, and birth worker. She coedited Revolutionary Mothering and authored two books of poetry, No God but Ghosts and Monsters and Other Silent Creatures. Ariel Gore is the founding editor of Hip Mama and the author of ten books including We Were Witches. She has won an American Alternative Press Award, the LAMBDA, the Rainbow Book Award, and an Arizona–New Mexico Book Award.